A Resource Saving Christmas Gift Idea

by Pat Fox

How many times do you grab a paper napkin or paper towel when you have a meal or a snack?

How high a pile of paper do you think that is in one year for one person or for your whole family?

Hopefully, those paper products are already made from reclaimed materials, but we can still do better and save some trees.

Soft paper products usually can’t be recycled, so
instead, why not make cloth napkins as holiday gifts for the whole family? These are colorful, nice to use and easy on the planet.

You can make 9 big napkins from one yard of 36” fabric, but you may want to recycle fabric from other purposes.
Near a holiday, it’s easy to find prints and colors that go with the season, and making matching placemats is also easy and makes an even nicer gift.

Cloth napkins can usually last through a few meals before needing to be washed and they last almost forever. If you learn some napkin folding tricks, you can set really cool tables with these as well.

If you can use a sewing machine or do hand sewing, all you need is to turn a thin rolled hem all around your 12” squares of fabric. Even easier, you can pull threads from all four edges to make fringed borders on napkins and place mats! Of course, you can be much fancier and make a patchwork napkin or two-sided ones if you wish.

This is a great project to do with a bunch of friends to make inexpensive gifts that people will love. You can use holiday prints or mix and match solid colors. Have some fun, get terrific gift ideas, and save a few trees making your own reusable napkins.